


Ashes to Ashes

by demowrites



Series: Occupational Hazards [4]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 20:14:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19933843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demowrites/pseuds/demowrites
Summary: Death, rebirth, and whiskey.





	Ashes to Ashes

In the absence of my common sense, I made the trip to the only place that remembered me. My name carved carefully in marble, weathered by moss and the misplaced guilt of my only friend. 

Without supervision, my mind set the scene.

A moment of silence stretched to several, swallowing the grief and numbing the smell of petrichor. The words were probably pretty, quiet and vague to keep the public afloat in the misery of a perfectly manicured plot of corpses. Maybe people cried. Maybe cameras were clicking softly in the distance, trying to capture the faces of the surviving Rangers. A disgruntled Ortega trying to escape unnoticed as a reporter chased after him, recorder in hand until Ortega’s fist met his face.

All very exciting. 

All very fake.

Eyes boring into each letter, my mortality greeted me once again--slinking around my shoulders and clinging to my skin, whispering promises of good times to come. Every moment was borrowed, and an inevitable debt has been accumulating since I escaped. Maybe my time underground, starved of sunlight and floating from one drug dosage to the next, was all a payment. A trade to breathe real air and exist in a world where rubber hands weren’t constantly claiming my flesh, constantly poking, prodding, searching, marking, _ripping_ \--

Maybe that was all just a payment to buy more time. Suffering for a while and then letting me wander in the shambles of Los Diablos, lawless and barren covered up by pretty neon lights and the remnants of Hollywood’s past. 

_Was it worth it?_

Bodies became memories that faded into headstones. None of the people here meant anything anymore. I didn’t mean anything anymore. Memories twisting to hate as the breath in my lungs churns out in a stream of smoke. 

I raised the flask in my hand, lips curled in condescension. 

“Ashes to ashes.  
Fame to dust.  
Here lies Sidestep,   
A fool in life, and a devil in death.  
May your lies chase you down, consume you whole...”

Bitter liquid took my next breath, chasing the words back down to my subconsciousness where they burrowed in to stay. A small cough to chase the fire away, twist of the cap, a grin to clear the slate.

“But not until your deeds are done.”

The sun began to slink beyond the horizon, shying away from the cemetery once again-- leaving the light grasping at the sunken letters that held my memory in vain.

**_SIDESTEP_ **   
_A Hero_   
_Gone but not forgotten._


End file.
